


Somewhere, Nowhere

by goldfusion



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College, F/M, Iwatobi, Reader-Insert, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 01:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfusion/pseuds/goldfusion
Summary: Sousuke finds a piece of himself in a girl he meets at the gym, but he is reluctant, unsure if he's ready to accept that piece of himself just yet.





	Somewhere, Nowhere

NPC, background character A, filler. At first, she was just a body in the peripheral of his vision, and it stayed that way for a long time, it seemed anyway. He wasn’t keeping track. When he finally took notice was January 3rd and the gym was extra crowded because everyone had a resolution to fulfill. There was only one empty treadmill and it was beside hers. When he passed her he saw, displayed in red digital lettering, that she had ran 22 kilometers and was well on her way to the 23rd. He subconsciously looked up at her face in brief disbelief to find that her breathing was barely disturbed. She wasn’t even sweating.

Was she training for a marathon or just not human?

After that he noticed her more frequently, in and around the gym, yet each time, she walked with ghostly elegance, eyes placid, lips drawn out in a straight line, always by herself. He’s never seen her with a friend or talking to someone. He’s never seen her on any other gym equipment other than the treadmill. He’s never seen her stop running. 

Where was she running to?

One time he ended up in line behind her in a coffee shop, that was the first time he heard her voice. “Iced Americano please”. No fluctuating syllables, neither too sharp or too husky, yet enchanted with a kind of richness. When she left he couldn’t help but let his gaze trail after her. Black coffee tasted like literal ass. He admired her for that. 

For a while after that, she disappeared. Whether she changed her gym schedule or stopped going altogether he didn’t know, but the serendipity of running into her seemed to have ceased.

During spring break, Rin came to visit. Sousuke absentmindedly brought up the girl who “ran like a marathon every time I see her at the gym” during one of their conversations over dinner, and Rin replied with “is she hot?”, to which Sousuke paused, and gave a noncommittal “I guess”. 

Truth be told, she was a little more than “I guess”.

When they threw away the takeout containers and haphazardly cleaned up the table, Rin suggested, “speaking of hot people, let’s go clubbing or something. It’s spring break”. Sousuke was not one for loud music and close proximities of sweaty bodies, but he could not turn down an invitation for booze. 

The two were gifted beyond sporting abilities. With a bit of hair gel and some button up shirts, Sousuke and Rin found themselves surrounded by a continuous flow of garrulous and flirtatious women as they sat by the bar at the club. The company of these women were not unwarranted, but Sousuke found himself zoning out from the voice of the girl in a holographic mini skirt beside him. As his gaze wondered aimlessly across the dancefloor, he spotted a certain face that bore an uncanny resemblance to a presumed marathon runner. 

She stood off to the far corner, swaying to the music and dancing with a grace and confidence that attracted the single males in her immediate proximity. She seemed to be alone, no friend in her company. There were at least two guys beside her grinding and swaggering in desperate attempts to get her attention, but she paid them no mind, just moving, eyes closed, to the beat of the music. Eventually, the guys got tired of being ignored despite their physical advancements and left to grind on some other girl, though their places beside her were quickly taken by other men with similar intentions. 

Sousuke’s voyeurism was interrupted when Rin took notice and teased, “who are you starring at?”, after which the girls beside them all turned to the direction Sousuke was looking. 

Maybe it was the shots of liquid courage (aka tequila) working their magic, as if on cue, Sousuke stood up, and with a “I’ll be right back” headed towards the dancefloor. 

“Are you going to dance?” Rin called out from behind him, “are you high? Since when do you dance?”

Sousuke didn’t dance, but something about the atmosphere in the club made her so damn captivating that night. Maybe it was the coloured lights that illuminated her skin, or the way her body melted into the beat of the music, maybe it was the alcohol working, or maybe it was just her. Whatever the cause, Sousuke found himself beside her, swaying not to the rhythm of the music but to the rhythm of her body. When she opened her eyes between songs their gazes met. A brief moment of recognition was all it took before he saw her smile for the first time, and he let her guide his hands to her waist.

A couple hours later, they exchanged phone numbers. A couples days later, he asked her out to dinner. Not to a coffee shop, not to a movie. To dinner. They talked about their classes, their exes, the latest blockbuster. They had many meals together after that. Brunch, lunch, midnight runs for fast-food. 

Eventually, their frivolous meetings began to bring him solace. It wasn’t trying to find conversation starters or things they had in common anymore, it was being harboured in each other’s company. Sousuke wouldn’t have called it love. He was still reluctant. There was a film in between them none of them took the initiative to pierce.

Then it was winter, though that year it never got too cold. They sat on a bench in an empty park during twilight after a walk when he asked her why she was constantly running. When she gave a nonchalant shrug, he asked again, “where are you running to?” . Maybe he had been thinking about it for too long, juggling the question inside his head. He wasn’t sure why he asked that. She was running on a treadmill. They’re designed to go nowhere. 

Her words fell into place like the formation of a constellation. “Somewhere…nowhere”. In retrospect, that was a fully accurate summary of Sousuke’s state of being at the time. Battered but undefeated. Too much ambition for his own good. Going somewhere but nowhere.

And then her background story took a turned for the fucked up. She told him she ran because her older sister had a goal of running a marathon, but her death came prematurely and ended that dream. She said this with a completely aloof expression, her speech neither quickening nor slowing. Someone who ran a half marathon without breaking a sweat, someone who spoke of their dead sister without batting an eye.

“So are you trying to complete a marathon?” Sousuke asked, focusing on that aspect of the conversation rather than the dead sibling part to avoid awkwardness.

She shook her head but offered no explanation.

He asked her why out of genuine curiosity. “You’re literally always running, how are you not training for a marathon?”

She paused to think for a second, then released her response in a fluid, well-constructed flow of sentences: “Every time I find myself reaching 35 kilometres without too much effort, I stop going to the gym for a month. I think I’m afraid of reaching the full 42 kilometers, because if I do, my sister will really be dead forever”.

Sousuke couldn’t remember his immediate reaction after hearing this, but in the weeks that followed, he didn’t contact her. He probably wanted to distance himself because he was afraid of her emotional baggage. He became nervous to even think of her. He convinced himself it was because he ghosted her, and that was awkward, but in truth, he became afraid of her, but he missed her.

In the next one and a half months Sousuke had sex with more women than all the previous years of his life combined. Never going back to the same partner for more than a second night. In retrospect, he should have known at that point that he was just a coward who could not stop missing her. But he couldn’t admit it to himself.

Rin came back again during winter break, they met up at a bar and he asked about the girl who ran marathons.

“It sounds like you’re just afraid of the baggage man. But it’s your choice if you want to ditch her or not,” Rin said, taking absentminded sips of his beer, “but in my opinion, she wouldn’t have told you all that so casually and nonchalant if she really had emotional baggage”.

Sousuke looked up from his drink to acknowledge Rin, “what do you mean?”

“I mean,” Rin promulgated, “I don’t think her baggage is baggage at all. If she can talk about it so openly, she’s probably moved on. Plus, I’ve seen her at the club, and if she is all that you say she is, she’s sexy and interesting. I don’t know why you’re still sitting on your ass and not going after her right now”. 

Why? Because Sousuke was afraid. He was afraid of losing security and afraid of the things he didn’t know. He was afraid of asking her out again and the “hey, do you want to be my girlfriend” because he saw himself in her and projected his own insecurities onto her. He was afraid of giving up swimming even at the cost of his health because he was afraid of an arid world without water. They were both relentlessly chasing a goal with no intention of reaching it, but at least she was self-aware.

The next day when he spent the whole day at the gym to realized she wasn’t going to show up, it finally hit him that he missed her. That came as a revelation. He bar-hopped and took strangers to bed because he was looking for silhouettes of her in the women whose names he couldn’t remember.

After that it was a wild goose chase. He retraced their encounters down to the coffee shop where she ordered black coffee to find her. He couldn’t. Maybe that was it. He lost his chance. Just as he sat back on his second-hand couch ready to numb himself with some cheap action thriller, he remembered that it was Friday. Friday was when people go clubbing..

He couldn’t be bothered with hair gel this time. It was the same dancefloor, same crowd. For a second, as his eyes scanned feverishly across the room, seeing no familiar faces, he sank. The atmosphere toppled. This was the consequence of his dissolution. 

Someone walked into him, he stumbled. When he looked up again, his gaze halted, then focused on the visage he was searching for. She was there, that outer corner of the dancefloor, her hips swaying, head bobbing, arms raised, eyes closed. The atmosphere fell into place again. She opened her eyes as the song changed and saw him as he walked with determination toward her. When he approached he saw that she was smiling expectedly. Sousuke pushed aside the guy grinding up on her and took her face between his hands. He had never touched her like this, but somehow, it didn’t feel foreign in the slightest. He was going to say something akin to an apology, but before his thoughts reached his tongue she tiptoed and her lips collided into his.

Her hands found their way through his hair, and he traced her jawline with his thumb. Their lips fitted perfectly against each other as they moved in cohesion to convey the longing lost in the months he disappeared. 

When they parted for air, foreheads still attached, he muttered out an apology for being a cowering dick.

“It’s okay,” she said “I knew you’d come back”.

**Author's Note:**

> YOYO LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK (there are some grammatical errors i don't really want to fix..)


End file.
